手紙

たけしくんへ、
おひさしぶりです。たけしくんはおげんきですか。私はげんきです。私の大学のせいかつはいそがしいですが、とてもたのしいです。高校より大学の方でおもしろいことがたくさんあります。でもプリンストンは小さいまちなので、ときどきつまらないです。
たけしくんは今ロンドンでべんきょうしますね。ロンドンとペキンと、どちらの方が好きですか。ロンドンでよく何をしますか。ロンドンでかいものとしょくじが高いので、アルバイトをしますか。そして、まだ中国語をべんきょうしますか。
高校のそつぎょうからあっていませんがたけしくんはいつペキンにかえりますか。私は毎年のなつにペキンにいますよ。たけしくんもかえって、もういちどいっしょにボーリングにいきませんか。
では、ロンドンのみんなによろしく。
王舒月

健君へ、
お久しぶりです。健君はお元気ですか。私は元気です。私の大学の生活は忙しいですが、とても楽しいです。高校より大学の方で面白い事がたくさんあります。でもプリンストンは小さい町なので、時々つまらないです。
健君は今ロンドンで勉強していますね。ロンドンとペキンと、どちらの方が好きですか。ロンドンでよく何をしますか。ロンドンで買い物と食事が高いので、アルバイトをしますか。そして、まだ中国語を勉強していますか。
高校の卒業から会っていませんが健君いつペキンに帰りますか。私は毎年の夏にペキンにいますよ。健君も帰って、もう一度一緒にボーリングに行きませんか。
では、ロンドンのみんなによろしく。
王舒月

カラオケが大好き！

ルムメートの明日美ちゃんと一緒にカラオケにいく時に、明日美ちゃんは毎回この歌を歌います。歌詞（lyrics）がはやいなので、あたしは歌えませんが、この歌が大好きです。

歌の名前は“どうして君を好きになってしまったんだろう”です。英語で"I wonder why I fell in love with you"といいます。バンドは東方神起です。韓国のバンドですが、日本語でよく歌いました。このバンドはもうたくさん変わりました。さいしょは五人がいましたが、今は二人がいます。それでも、今もいいバンドですよ。

東方神起

ひらがなで：とうほうしんき

えいごで：DBSK/TVXQ

一緒に＝いっしょに
時＝とき (time/when)
毎回＝まいかい (every time)
歌＝うた
歌詞＝かし (lyrics)

メキシコ！The End!

あたしは  おそいね…ごめんなさい！メキシコのりょこうの最後のブログです。きれいな写真がたくさんありますよ！

Sorry this is so late! (>_<) It's hard to write about a trip that is so old... Anyway, after Oaxaca, we took the night bus back to Mexico City, and that's where we spent our last few days. Our hostel was right next to the Zocalo, so the first thing we saw in the morning while looking for the hostel was this:

The Zocalo with a view on the Cathedral.

Background: The National Palace.

What are these weird, colorful animals?
We're not sure either, but it has to do with the Day of the Dead...

The hostel's location was perfect to visit the Cathedral and the National Palace (part of which is now a museum), so that's what we did first.

Inside the Cathedral

Inside the National Palace.

Then we headed to the Templo Mayor – a compound of ruins right in the middle of the city.

One of the patios within the Templo Mayor. See the rows of skulls on that wall?
Background: the Cathedral.

This painted bas-relief of the dismenbered goddess of the moon is
one of the most famous findings in Templo Mayor. (Reproduction)

 The rest of the day we spent walking around the old center of Mexico City. We mostly walked along the main streets... Got some delicious ice cream, and found a few gems...

Mexico City's Art Museum.

Day of the Dead Art. Chalk on whatever-the-ground-was-made-of.

Unique bench!

それから、つぎの日に、バスでTeotihuacanにいきました。Teotihuacanはメキシコシティのちかくにあります。It is a huge Aztec compound, with three famous temples: the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, the Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of the Sun. It's a trek to go from the first (at one end of the straight road that runs through the linearly arranged compound) to the last (at the other end), but it was worth it. It was a beautiful day, too.

Inner façade of the Temple of Feathered Serpents. Heads of feathered serpents alternating with
Tlaloc heads (four-eyed, snake-like god). We can see the bodies of the serpents in bas-relief.

Pyramid of the Moon.

The view from the Pyramid of the Moon (but a fraction of the whole complex).

Pyramid of the Sun.
(Huge building – the biggest of the three, but somehow not as interesting.)

Finally, we spent our last day in Mexico visiting just one museum in Mexico City: the National Museum of Anthropology. This museum is so worth the money, the time, and the energy!! I could have spent at least two days in there... There's just too much to show, but just a few highlights for me:

メキシコのネティブの文化はきれいですが、すこしこわいですね…　

最後＝さいご (last)

文化＝ぶんか (culture)

Time flies! (Third Cycle Goal Statement)

It's already the end of the Second Cycle??　速かった！速すぎる！ I didn't see time go at all...?

Reflection on the Second Cycle of Pronunciation Exercises:

I went to the Japanese language table at least once a week every week, except this week (I've been busy for several reasons – actually I don't think I ate dinner in the dining hall more than once this week). I also watched some anime but not much. However, I watched a lot of Japanese movies instead. I also completely failed at doing "official" shadowing. Overall, this cycle hasn't been as successful as the last in terms of doing what I planned to do. But I got a lot of practice during Thanksgiving break because I hung out with my roommate and other JSA members (EASの大学院生とJSAのメンバーとカラオケにいって六時間ぐらい歌って初めでしりとりをしました)。I think I improved a lot, especially in terms of fulfilling my goal – speaking faster and more naturally.

Third Cycle of Pronunciation Exercises:

My goal for the rest of the semester will be to stop randomly changing from one level of speech to another. I want to reduce the (very frequent) awkward moments when I realize I've been using informal speech with a teacher or formal speech with my friends. Because this is also relevant to Korean, it is a very important exercise. What I do all the time, especially, is answering うん instead of はい or いいえ. (Although at least it seems that's not that bad in Japanese. It seems to be a bit weird in Korean.)

In terms of concrete activities, I think I will repeat my goals from last time: shadowing (hopefully I will have more time to do it this time), going to Japanese language table and talking more there, and using Japanese with my friends. I will try to watch more anime/movies because those are very useful to understand when to use formal/informal speech.

メキシコ！(Continued~)

So, I promised you to continue talking about my trip to Mexico, didn't I? Haha... ^^" ごめんね！最近（さいきん）忙しいでした。

So, the next day, after going around some more churches in Puebla, we took the afternoon bus to Oaxaca. After spending the night in the youth hostel, we went on a half-day tour to Monte Albán, an archeological site of a pre-Columbian ceremonial center situated on top of a leveled mountain ridge. It was really impressive. 写真を見てください！

The next day, we went to Palenque to see the ruins there. It was quite far so we took the night train there and back. It was tiring (疲れました！) but it was worth it to see the ruins in the jungle. It was a very different environment – much more humid, and hotter.

This is misleading... This building was huge!

It was really tiring going up all these (absurdly high) steps, but the view was worth it!

And here's me, finally getting some rest. ^^

The next day, we spent some more time in Oaxaca – mostly visiting museums and churches. We were really lucky and were in Mexico for the Day of the Dead (the equivalent of Halloween, you could say), so we got to see some special decorations, and we saw the processions dancing through the streets. Some of the costumes were amazing! The most popular was, of course, the skeleton in a wedding dress. It was quite entertaining to see them dancing to the upbeat music.

On our last day in Oaxaca, we took another half-day tour just to see some landscapes in the area. We stopped by a local cooperative of women doing traditional weaving, a local production of Mexcal (メキシコのさけ), and the widest tree in the world...

The most important and special part of the local traditional weaving is that
the threads are all coloured with natural colorants. They use flowers, spices, and even dried insects.

Second Cycle Goal Statement

Goal:
Besides avoiding the ingrained habit of changing the intonation in questions, which I think I can do as long as I consciously think about it for a while, I can't think of specific things that I want to improve about my Japanese pronunciation. That is not to say that my pronunciation is perfect, far from it, but I can't pinpoint any specific problem that I could work on. However, there is something that I can work on improving for my speaking. My Korean teacher has pointed out to me that my problem is often that I speak too slowly because I am always trying to make perfect sentences. As he says, when speaking, I don't always need to use complete, grammatically perfect and complex sentences. It is more important to get used to speaking at a "normal" speed (a speed close to what would be normal for a native speaker) and to be able to sound natural – even when hesitating or not knowing what to say. Although this is harder in Japanese because I don't have as much vocab yet, my goal will be to increase the speed at which I speak, not just the words but sentences in general. This should help with the problem I have of completely forgetting intonations when I am hesitating.


Activities:
I will keep going to language table at least once a week and watching anime, and doing some shadowing of the anime. I will also try to do some "official" shadowing so I can get more feedback on my pronunciation – let's set a goal of one shadowing exercise per week. I will try to speak more at the language tables, and to use more Japanese when talking to my Japanese friends.

メキシコ！First Day!

秋休みに私は友達とメキシコに行きました。メキシコの天気はとてもよかったです。It was very sunny all the time, but it wasn't too hot because we were on high plateaus. あたしたちはメキシコシティ(Mexico City)とプエブラ(Puebla)とオアハカ(Oaxaca)とパレンケ(Palenque)に行きました。

We took the plane to Mexico City on Friday and got onto a bus to Puebla as soon as we got there. We arrived in Puebla around 午前二時 and just slept. The next day, we visited the city. とても可愛い町です！There are lots of hispanic-style buildings, of all colours, with cute windows, and churches everywhere (that seemed to be quite common in Mexico). The main square, the Zocalo, is really impressive. We went sweets-shopping in a street that had traditional sweets shops, and tried some really good things – the milk-flavored sweets were especially good in my opinion, but they also had a lot of coconut-flavored things.

This is Puebla's Zocalo. There is a fountain in the middle, and a basilique on one side,
the town's municipal palace on the other, and churches at every corner. 大きいですね！

忙しいですから今日はここまで話せます。There's too much to say and too many pictures to show, so I'll just leave it here for now. じゃ、明日！


秋休み＝あきやすみ (fall break)
友達＝ともだち (friend)
午前＝ごぜん
二時＝にじ
可愛い＝かわいい (cute)
町＝まち
忙しい＝いそがしい (busy)
話せます＝はなせます (to talk)

たいへん！忘れた！（PE Reflection Statement)

I was supposed to write my PE reflection statement by midnight last Friday, but I forgot to do it! I planned to write it between my oral exam in the morning and leaving for fall break at noon, but I underestimated the time I'd need to pack, and I couldn't write it before leaving. I went on a backpacking trip to Mexico so I didn't bring my computer, and I didn't have access to Internet... Well, I did once in a hostel, but I had completely forgotten about it. ほんとにすみません！

Anyway, more on my trip to Mexico later, let me write this reflection statement now.

Bilan du Premier Cycle
During this cycle, I did go to the Japanese Language table at least once a week, and I watched anime most weeks (not two episodes every week, but something equivalent to that in average, since I sometimes went to anime club and watched three or four episodes in a row). All in all, I did a lot of listening, and I think my listening improved.
Speaking-wise, I got a little practice, but not as much (sometimes I could only go to the Monday table in Forbes, and my level was not high enough to actively participate in the conversation). I didn't do as much shadowing as I planned to, but when watching anime with my roommate, I would sometimes repeat random (short) sentences, and ask her to tell me if they sounded wrong. I think I tried to avoid shadowing properly because it is very time-consuming – I'd have to listen to something several times, and record myself to make sure I'm saying it right... – and I hate listening to my own voice! (>_<) However, I think my speed increased for simple sentences, and I am less likely to use wrong intonation for words and phrases that I am familiar with.

Oral Exam
Unfortunately, I don't remember my exam that clearly, but I'll comment on what I remember. I think リウ-さん and I practiced enough to be comfortable with each other. We didn't write a script for the oral, which meant that during the second section, we would sometimes have small pauses in the conversation while we were looking for something to ask about, but it also meant that we practiced not only pronunciation, but also grammar and vocabulary every time we practiced together, so that was good. Thanks to that, the spontaneous conversation with Suzuki-san went quite well (except that sometimes we couldn't figure out who should answer Suzuki-san's questions...)
The main problem I had was hesitating during the third section, especially while trying to conjugate adjectives, and sometimes when trying to find the vocabulary. I think that might have affected my intonation. (To be honest, I did not pay too much attention to intonation during the exam, because I was so focused on forming proper sentences and saying the right words.)


Signing off now, because I have a lot of other work to catch up on... Sorry for the wall of text, and I hope you all had a great fall break (or a great week, either way)! Look forward to more posts with pictures of Mexico!

日記２：中間試験

今週は中間試験があります。あたしは木曜日で試験（five!）がありますからたくさん勉強します。頑張ります！               ｶﾞﾝﾊﾞ━━━o(・`ω´・)○))━━━ ﾙ!!! 
木曜日はプリンストン・ハロウィンもあります。面白いですけど金曜日にも試験がありますからたぶん行きません。

中間試験＝ちゅうかんしけん (midterm exam)
頑張る＝がんばる (to try hard, to try one's best)

太陽の歌（The Movie)

昨日の晩、あたしは映画を見ました。映画の名前は“太陽の歌”（たいようのうた＝Song of the Sun）です。悲しい映画です。映画の中にYUIがいます。YUIは有名な歌手です。YUIの歌とYUIの声はとてもきれいですよ。みんなさんもYUIの歌を聞いてください！

"Song of the Sun" (or in English, "Midnight Sun", I think) is about a girl with a rare disease which makes UV radiation potentially lethal to her. Because of this condition, she can't go out during the day, so she sleeps the days away and goes out at night to play guitar and sing in front of a station. The movie tells her touching story starting from her meeting and budding relationship with a young boy.

Mah, this is how I procrastinate...

悲しい＝かなしい (to be sad)
歌手＝かしゅ (singer)
歌＝うた (song)
声＝こえ (voice)

日記１：宿題がたくさんあります。

今週は宿題がたくさんあります。だから時間がありませんから、あたしは今日の日本語のテーブルに行きませんでした。でも昨日の日本語のテーブルに行きました。佐藤先生を見ました。日本語のテーブルはいつも面白いです。

フー、最近疲れました。（ - ＿-）–3

（あたしは韓国語の授業でも日記を書いています。）
In Korean class, we have to keep not a blog, but a journal. And it has to be all in Korean.
This is the notebook that I'm using. I think it helps that the notebook is cute.

日記＝にっき (diary)

最近＝さいきん (lately)

疲れる＝つかれる (to be tired)

書く＝かく (to write) (書きます)

First Cycle Goal Statement

The first cycle of Pronunciation Exercise (shortened, funnily enough, as PE) is starting. For the next three weeks or so, my goal is to be able to pronounce Japanese vowels, especially long vowels, more naturally. I also want to be able to speak faster and more naturally without losing the right intonation of words.

Activities: I will go to Japanese Language table at least once a week (either the one in Forbes on Monday, or the one in Matthey on Tuesday), I will try to practice with a native speaker (thankfully, my roommate counts), and I will watch at least two episodes of anime per week, shadowing for at least twenty minutes a week.

It looks daunting... Especially the shadowing, actually. I always find it awkward to speak out loud to myself (incidentally, that's why I hate phone calls especially when I don't know the person at the other end very well or at all...) But I'll do my best!!

A little bit more about myself（自己紹介）

今日は？I'm supposed to introduced myself, but there's not much I can add since I've already said most of what I know how to say...


あたしはフランス人です。でもお父さんとお母さんは中国人です。だからフランス語と中国語と英語をはなせます。高校でドイツ語を勉強しました。大学で韓国語と日本語を勉強しています。

フランス＝France
中国＝ちゅうごく(China)
韓国＝かんこく(Korea)
英語＝えいご
人＝じん
自己紹介＝じこしょうかい (self-introduction)

初めまして！

あたしは Princeton 大学の二年生です。名前は 沙織 (Saori)です。(あ，実はあたしが日本語の名前はありません。でも“沙織”が好きです。）どうぞよろしくお願いします！

大学で日本語を勉強します。I have just started learning Japanese this year, and I am really excited about it! I have always wanted to learn Japanese! If you ask me why, well... I think it all started when my friend introduced me to NARUTO and the world of 漫画 and anime, at the tender age of twelve, or maybe it was before that, when my childhood friend moved to Tokyo, or maybe it was even earlier than that, watching Cardcaptor Sakura as a kid and getting jealous of the pretty names... I can't really say.

Oh wow, Sakura was such a baby. It's so weird looking at it now... >_<

Thankfully, there's a grown-up version too! Here comes Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles (Epic Art Edition~) 

Anyway, back to the point. Like most of our generation, I grew up alongside Japanese anime culture (which one of us can honestly say they have never seen Pokemon!!), and like a lot of other kids, I jumped headfirst into it as soon as I got the chance (although I'm more of a manga person than an anime person). Hence my fascination with Japan.

Now I guess there's other reasons why I decided to learn Japanese here and now. First, after a year of Korean, I realized that the EAS department at Princeton was awesome. Second, I decided it would be really cool to be fluent in all three East Asian languages. (Sorry, Vietnamese only half-counts. And besides it's too hard. I'll stick to Korapaninese, thanks. (That's Korean, Japanese and Chinese, by the way. =P)) And last but not least, my roommate this year is Japanese and I pretty much joined JSA last year during the tsunami relief efforts, so there's a lot of Japanese-speaking people around me, and I'd love to be able to understand them and communicate with them. (Good luck me... That's going to take forever. =__=)

Ok, well, I should go and study now. 加油！！